The Mistletoe Motive(6)
“Soup’s hot,” Eli says.
“Good. I need to thaw.”
I wander into the kitchen and ladle myself a bowl of Eli’s glorious chicken soup, fighting a pang of blindsiding melancholy. June’s unwashed to-go coffee mugs litter the counter beside Eli’s cookbooks. Eli laughs at the movie as June gives Scrooge a colorful hand gesture. I shut my eyes and savor the moment, locking it away in my memories, because I know this roommate set-up won’t last forever.
Since college, the three of us have lived together because it allowed us to save money in an expensive city and afford a nicer place than we could have otherwise rented on our own. But I know what’s coming. Soon, Eli and his boyfriend, Luke, will get a place together; June will finally move closer to the hospital because she’s tired of the long commute.
And I’ll be solitary Gabriella, with her cat Gingerbread and her floor-to-ceiling stacks of romance novels. Which isn’t a bad life, it’s just…I’ll miss them, and I suck at adjusting to change, and the truth is that while the holidays are my favorite time of year, it’s not just because I love snow and peppermint-chocolate everything and sugar cookies and celebratory traditions—it’s the people I share this time of year with who make it mean everything to me. It’s our holiday movie marathon and baking my family’s pizzelle recipe alongside Eli’s sufganiyot. It’s the three of us taking our annual stroll through the conservatory’s Winter Wonderland display with boozy cider in our thermoses and June starting a tipsy snowball fight on our walk home.
What if it’s our last holiday living together?
June catches me lost in my maudlin thoughts and frowns. “Everything okay?”
“Yep.” I turn away so she can’t see me mope. “How was work, you two?”
“Busy,” they both answer.
That’s about all I get from them when I ask about work, since it’s client confidential. June’s an ICU nurse, and Eli’s a children’s therapist.
“How about you?” June calls as I toast myself a piece of bread.
“Exhausting,” I tell her, watching the opening of The Muppet Christmas Carol on the TV. “I dealt with my own Scrooge all day.”
Jonathan was surlier than normal as I decorated the bookshop and hummed along to my holiday playlist. While I decked the halls with homemade glittering clay and papier maché snowflakes and dreidels, kinaras and Christmas trees, seven-star pi?atas and menorahs and fire and light solstice symbols, I repeatedly caught him looking at me with that new, brow-furrowed, cryptic expression. And when it was time for him to leave—we alternate who stays until seven to close up—he stormed out without even his usual surly “Goodnight.”
As I return to the living room, Eli whips back the blanket for me on the sofa. I land with an ungainly flop and just manage not to splash soup all over us.
“So you dealt with Mr. Scrooge,” he says, “and it’s the first of December. Meaning you decorated the bookstore today. That’ll wear anyone out. How you do that by yourself is beyond me. You should hire some people to help.”
“There’s no money for that, El.”
“That jerk she works with could help her,” June mutters into her soup.
“Hah.” I snort. “He’d never. Jonathan’s such a grinch.”
Pausing the movie, Eli says diplomatically, “Maybe the holidays are difficult for him.”
June and I level him with a hard glare.
He lifts his free hand in surrender. “I’m just saying, for all sorts of valid reasons, not everyone loves the holidays.”
“What’s not to love? I work hard to include and represent all the winter holidays, to make sure anyone who visits Bailey’s feels welcome and seen.”
Eli settles the weighted blanket onto my lap. “And you do that beautifully. But following your logic, if we truly welcome everyone’s celebration of the season, that includes welcoming even those who don’t find it so celebratory.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t like when you make sense.”
“Would you leave your therapist hat in the office and stop being so compassionate?” June stretches out of her recliner and yanks the remote from his lap. “It’s going to rub off on me.”
“Yeah, El.” I nudge him playfully with my foot. “Whose side are you on anyway? May I remind you that working with Jonathan Frost has shaved years off my life? That I’ve developed acid reflux since he came to the store?”
“Okay,” June says, “the nurse in me must point out that your acid reflux would be way better controlled if you weren’t a certified chocoholic. And if your diet wasn’t ninety percent tomatoes.”
“I’m half-Italian! These things cannot be helped.”
June plops back into her recliner with the remote on a contented sigh. “Dietary choices aside, the guy is still a dick, and he certainly hasn’t helped your GERD.”
“Can I ask something?” Eli says.
“Fine,” I grumble. “But make it quick. I want to watch Muppets dressed in Victorian clothes and forget about reality.”
“Does Jonathan know you’re on the spectrum?”
I fidget and stir my soup. “No.”
“But the Baileys do,” he says.